'There are monsters in the world. When Violeta Graceling arrives at haunted Lakesedge estate, she expects to find a monster. She knows the terrifying rumours about Rowan Sylvanan, who drowned his entire family when he was a boy. But neither the estate nor the monster are what they seem.
'There are monsters in the woods. As Leta falls for Rowan, she discovers he is bound to the Lord Under, the sinister death god lurking in the black waters of the lake. A creature to whom Leta is inexplicably drawn…
'There’s a monster in the shadows, and now it knows my name. Now, to save Rowan—and herself—Leta must confront the darkness in her past, including unravelling the mystery of her connection to the Lord Under.'
Lakesedge is a darkly Gothic fantasy romance filled with queer characters and strange magics, making it a good read for the Halloween season.
The story follows Violeta Graceling, a young woman who has been living with a surrogate mother, along with her younger brother Arien, since her parents died when she and her brother were young. Whilst it's great that she and her brother have a roof over their heads rather than having to survive on the streets it's not perfect for them, especially because of the strange magic that Arien seems to control. Whenever Arien has nightmares, which seems to be a common thing, dark shadowy magic flows from him. His surrogate mother being a good godly woman sees this as a connection to Lord Under, the god of darkness and death, so hurts Arien whenever this happens.
Violeta has spent years trying to prevent her mothers anger from causing serious harm to her brother, as well as trying to keep it hidden from the rest of the village. Everything seems to change, however, during the most recent tithe when the local lord, Rowan Sylvanan, comes to town. The young Lord is a figure of fear for the locals, due to rumours of him having drowned his entire family in the lake beside his stately home. Rowan sees the magic that Arien has, and decides that he wants to take him back to his estate with him.
Trying her best to prevent this, Violeta finally has to accept that she can't keep Arien at home; but she can still try to keep him safe. As such, she makes Rowan agree to take her along too. Arriving at the estate, Violeta and Arien discover a dark corruption has overtaken the lake, turning its waters black. With the corruption threatening to spread and harm more of the world Rowan wants to try and use Arien's magics to help combat it; but they don't have much time left before the corruption becomes unstoppable.
From pretty early on in the book there's a lot of set up for stuff to come, promises of big stakes, frightening confrontations, and world building; but after Violeta and Arien reach Rowans estate things slow down a lot; which is odd considering how quickly the book moves. In the early parts of the book the story is being set up to be a very dark story, something closer to horror than anything else, and Rowan is a big part of this too. He's described as being a monster, and Violeta absolutely hates him when they first meet. And whilst he does come across as grumpy and rather uncaring it quickly becomes apparent that he's actually a decent guy; albeit one who doesn't like to explain himself much, which leads to more than one occasion where Violeta storms ahead and makes a fool of herself.
I was expecting Rowan to be a figure that took a long time to figure out, that he was going to be closer to an anti-hero more than anything else, but at some point all of the parts that made him seem like a much darker and more mature figure just fell away. What was left after this was a love story between him and Violeta that should have resulted in the two of them ending up together a lot sooner than it did.
The reason there were issues with the two of them, and the book on a whole for me, was Violeta. Violeta is a hot headed character. She thinks she knows best and doesn't expect that anyone else can do as well as she can, even when its a situation where she has little knowledge or expertise. For example, when she believes that she's found a solution to solving the corruption she goes ahead and acts without talking to anyone else, despite all those around her having more knowledge and experience, and her actions putting herself at serious risk. This tends to be what keeps her and Rowan apart a lot off the time, as every time they come close to getting together she ends up doing something impulsive and reckless. I know that we're supposed to have characters that are confident, even if they're not competent, but there were times when Violeta went beyond reckless into plain foolish.
I also think the pacing of the book didn't help with my struggle to connect with Violeta too, as there are large sections of the book where we skim over days and weeks of time to jump to the next major event. Whilst I know we can't follow every single moment of these characters lives and have to focus on the important parts it did feel like we were missing out on a lot of development, especially in the interpersonal relationships. In one chapter Violeta would be somewhat guarded towards another character, keeping them at arms length because they didn't quite trust them, whilst the next they were good friends who spent time together and confided in each other. The little moments between these two states, where we could have seen these bonds forming were missing, and as such I felt little connection to the characters beyond being pieces of the story.
It's a shame, as there was a lot in the early parts of the book that I liked, things that are present throughout the entire novel yes, but that felt only half done by the end. I enjoyed the story for what it was, but I didn't feel much for the characters that inhabited it, and think that if we'd have been given more time with them, more time to see relationships grow and develop, I might have come to love the book.
As it is, I enjoyed Lakesedge, and found it to be a perfectly fine fantasy story with some interesting ideas and some great queer representation, but it just failed to grab me and excite me in big ways. Hopefully this will be something that changes in the second book, and I'll end up coming to like the series more.
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